Have I ever mentioned that I am an artist? I am an artist.
I could have been an artist.
I rarely, if ever, find a chance to draw anymore. A couple of posts ago, I listed 12 things that you probably didn't know about me, and one of them was that my drawing skill has actually diminished. I can pinpoint this occurence:
Mr. T. Cox.
In Junior High, our art teacher was not very well-liked, because she was supposedly "mean." I would be mean, too, though, if none of my students cared enough to even try to draw something. She was always very nice to me, and though people said it was because I was good at drawing, I maintain it was because I actually listened when she talked. That is the minimum a teacher should expect, I think. On the last day of Junior High, she stopped me in the hallway to tell me that I'd better take Drawing in high school. I told her of course I was, and she told me she was glad, because I was one of the best art students she'd had for several years.
Emmo warned me against the high school art teacher. "He's crazy," she told me. "No one likes him. Well, some people like him, but only the crazy ones."
I should listen to Emmo more often.
As the prophecy foretold, Mr. Cox was a nutcase. Freshman year wasn't that bad, but Freshman always like him. (Which is odd, because he doesn't like Freshman at all. All he does in his other classes is complain about the "stupid Freshman" that are all "sluts".) But come Sophomore year, he can be seen for all he truly is: A madman.
This man, with the aid of the cluttered schedule that befalls every Academic Honors student, has completely squandered my artistic potential. He will assign us an assignment, then we are to come up with an idea and a plan, and present it to him. If he likes it, we can start, if he doesn't, we change it. Here's the thing: He never likes it, and we are hardly the ones who change it. It usually goes more along the lines of: We present an idea, he tells us what to do, and it usually has nothing to do with the original plan. I feel like he use a molding couch cushion to smother my creativity in his back office.
But this year, Junior year, is the year that I lost all tolerance for the man.
I was working on a painting he'd assigned. It was a very difficult painting for me, because much of it was a landscape. I'd decided to do a landscape mostly because they are difficult for me and I wanted to improve. Now, the art department got new tables this year, and they are considerably smaller than the old ones, so I have to push two of them together in order to hold my canvas, paint, water, and towel. The tops of the tables also have kind of a habit of falling apart. The plastic that covers the wooden top doesn't stick right. So, Mr. Cox was having Thurman check the tables to see which tops needed replacing, and we had to separate my tables to check them.
While he was doing this, I went to look for my paintbrushes, because someone had moved them again. So I'm looking for my brushes at the counter where Han is painting and Thurman is checking my table, and out of the blue, Mr. Cox starts screaming at me for not working. And I mean knocked-over-his-chair, red-in-the-face, shaking-hands screaming. I tried to tell him what I was doing, but he would have none of it, so I did what he said and went to go get my paint tray, which was behind me. As I turned around, all I could think was, "I really hope he doesn't hit me."
I went to the back room to get water, and I was still upset, seeing as it'd only been approximately forty seconds, and I started crying. I wasn't going to go back out there crying, because my table(s) were right next do his desk, so I stayed there for a couple of minutes. Mr. Cox eventually came back there and started yelling at me again, while I was still in tears. All he kept saying was that I never work in his class, which is a lie: I had a nearly complete painting to show for the last few weeks, and I'd even asked him a couple of days before if that was enough for the grade for the last six weeks, and he had said yes. I finally asked him what he wanted me to do. He said,"I want you to finish your painting," and I told him that that was all I had been trying to do.
So I went back out to my tables and started painting, and Han asked me if I was okay. "I will be, but don't expect to see me in here on Monday," was my response. I said it quietly, partially so my voice wouldn't crack and partially because I didn't want him to hear. Well, it didn't quite work, and he started yelling/screaming... again, because he thought that I had said that to him. I said, "Mr. Cox, if I had intended that for your ears, I would have said it to you." He told me if I felt like that then I needed to go to the guidance office, and otherwise, I needed to paint. I tried to paint, but my hands were shaking, and I got a big ugly squiggle done the side of my girl's dress, so I decided to ditch the canvas and go see Mrs. Thompson.
Long story short, I ended up staying the class, but I cut Ceramics out of my Senior schedule. This is disappointing to me, because I was really looking forward to Ceramics. Three dimensional art had a growing appeal to me, and I was sad that I was going to miss out on the opportunity to further my abilities in it. But I am emotionally unstable enough without having to spend an hour every day with a psychopath with an inexplicable loathing for me.
As important as art is to me, I think that my emotional health is far more important, and I think that as long as I have to endure his company, the memory of him screaming at me red-faced and my brief fear of being attacked by him will not leave me alone.
I wish I didn't have to trade in artistic advancement for some amount of emotional security, because I've always looked forward to a career in art. There were many flaws with this plan, which I always thought I'd be able to work around, but I've moved on. My number one passion is no longer self-expression anymore, anyways.
I've decided to get a double major in Social Work and Psychology. The one thing that I think bothers me most in the world is the emotional condition of children and teenagers. I would like to be a social caseworker to help get endangered children out of dangerous households, or a therapist for "troubled youth." I'll still minor in Art, more than likely. Who knows, maybe I'll make a breakthrough in "art therapy." :D That would be really cool!
<3 o.
I could have been an artist.
I rarely, if ever, find a chance to draw anymore. A couple of posts ago, I listed 12 things that you probably didn't know about me, and one of them was that my drawing skill has actually diminished. I can pinpoint this occurence:
Mr. T. Cox.
In Junior High, our art teacher was not very well-liked, because she was supposedly "mean." I would be mean, too, though, if none of my students cared enough to even try to draw something. She was always very nice to me, and though people said it was because I was good at drawing, I maintain it was because I actually listened when she talked. That is the minimum a teacher should expect, I think. On the last day of Junior High, she stopped me in the hallway to tell me that I'd better take Drawing in high school. I told her of course I was, and she told me she was glad, because I was one of the best art students she'd had for several years.
Emmo warned me against the high school art teacher. "He's crazy," she told me. "No one likes him. Well, some people like him, but only the crazy ones."
I should listen to Emmo more often.
As the prophecy foretold, Mr. Cox was a nutcase. Freshman year wasn't that bad, but Freshman always like him. (Which is odd, because he doesn't like Freshman at all. All he does in his other classes is complain about the "stupid Freshman" that are all "sluts".) But come Sophomore year, he can be seen for all he truly is: A madman.
This man, with the aid of the cluttered schedule that befalls every Academic Honors student, has completely squandered my artistic potential. He will assign us an assignment, then we are to come up with an idea and a plan, and present it to him. If he likes it, we can start, if he doesn't, we change it. Here's the thing: He never likes it, and we are hardly the ones who change it. It usually goes more along the lines of: We present an idea, he tells us what to do, and it usually has nothing to do with the original plan. I feel like he use a molding couch cushion to smother my creativity in his back office.
But this year, Junior year, is the year that I lost all tolerance for the man.
I was working on a painting he'd assigned. It was a very difficult painting for me, because much of it was a landscape. I'd decided to do a landscape mostly because they are difficult for me and I wanted to improve. Now, the art department got new tables this year, and they are considerably smaller than the old ones, so I have to push two of them together in order to hold my canvas, paint, water, and towel. The tops of the tables also have kind of a habit of falling apart. The plastic that covers the wooden top doesn't stick right. So, Mr. Cox was having Thurman check the tables to see which tops needed replacing, and we had to separate my tables to check them.
While he was doing this, I went to look for my paintbrushes, because someone had moved them again. So I'm looking for my brushes at the counter where Han is painting and Thurman is checking my table, and out of the blue, Mr. Cox starts screaming at me for not working. And I mean knocked-over-his-chair, red-in-the-face, shaking-hands screaming. I tried to tell him what I was doing, but he would have none of it, so I did what he said and went to go get my paint tray, which was behind me. As I turned around, all I could think was, "I really hope he doesn't hit me."
I went to the back room to get water, and I was still upset, seeing as it'd only been approximately forty seconds, and I started crying. I wasn't going to go back out there crying, because my table(s) were right next do his desk, so I stayed there for a couple of minutes. Mr. Cox eventually came back there and started yelling at me again, while I was still in tears. All he kept saying was that I never work in his class, which is a lie: I had a nearly complete painting to show for the last few weeks, and I'd even asked him a couple of days before if that was enough for the grade for the last six weeks, and he had said yes. I finally asked him what he wanted me to do. He said,"I want you to finish your painting," and I told him that that was all I had been trying to do.
So I went back out to my tables and started painting, and Han asked me if I was okay. "I will be, but don't expect to see me in here on Monday," was my response. I said it quietly, partially so my voice wouldn't crack and partially because I didn't want him to hear. Well, it didn't quite work, and he started yelling/screaming... again, because he thought that I had said that to him. I said, "Mr. Cox, if I had intended that for your ears, I would have said it to you." He told me if I felt like that then I needed to go to the guidance office, and otherwise, I needed to paint. I tried to paint, but my hands were shaking, and I got a big ugly squiggle done the side of my girl's dress, so I decided to ditch the canvas and go see Mrs. Thompson.
Long story short, I ended up staying the class, but I cut Ceramics out of my Senior schedule. This is disappointing to me, because I was really looking forward to Ceramics. Three dimensional art had a growing appeal to me, and I was sad that I was going to miss out on the opportunity to further my abilities in it. But I am emotionally unstable enough without having to spend an hour every day with a psychopath with an inexplicable loathing for me.
As important as art is to me, I think that my emotional health is far more important, and I think that as long as I have to endure his company, the memory of him screaming at me red-faced and my brief fear of being attacked by him will not leave me alone.
I wish I didn't have to trade in artistic advancement for some amount of emotional security, because I've always looked forward to a career in art. There were many flaws with this plan, which I always thought I'd be able to work around, but I've moved on. My number one passion is no longer self-expression anymore, anyways.
I've decided to get a double major in Social Work and Psychology. The one thing that I think bothers me most in the world is the emotional condition of children and teenagers. I would like to be a social caseworker to help get endangered children out of dangerous households, or a therapist for "troubled youth." I'll still minor in Art, more than likely. Who knows, maybe I'll make a breakthrough in "art therapy." :D That would be really cool!
<3 o.
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